In a significant shift, USD coin (USDC) has surpassed Ripple’s XRP to become the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. According to price tracker CoinMarketCap, USDC’s market cap currently stands at $27.37 billion, while XRP has a market cap of $27.21 billion.
USDC’s Growth
The development comes as the stablecoin market continues to witness significant growth. Over the past month, the combined market cap of leading stablecoins, including USDC, increased from $131.71 billion to $136.56 billion.
At the same time, USDC witnessed a notable surge in its supply by 7.2%. The stable token also saw two consecutive months of growth in supply following several months of redemption. USDC’s trading volume currently stands at $4.8 billion, up 11.5% in the past 24 hours.
XRP Struggles
While USDC has been showing impressive numbers alongside the rest of the stablecoin market, XRP has struggled simultaneously. The token’s slump can be partly attributed to Ripples’ ongoing lawsuit with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC filed the lawsuit in late 2020, alleging that Ripple sold XRP tokens as unregistered securities. In a partial victory for Ripple, Judge Analisa Torres ruled that XRP sales through crypto exchanges weren’t securities offerings. Still, at the same time, she sided with the agency on claims that sales of XRP to institutional investors may have been unregistered securities offerings. The case is still ongoing.
These legal woes have raised doubt among both small and large XRP investors (referred to as whales), with many offloading their XRP stash – which has further driven down the token’s price.
XRP’s struggle was further exacerbated by a recent hack involving the token. XRP fell sharply by more than 5% last week amid reports the network was hacked and drained worth $112.5 million of the token. On-chain sleuth ZachXBT revealed that hackers stole the tokens from one XRP wallet and laundered them through multiple exchanges, including Binance, MEXC, Gate.io, Kraken, OKX, HTX, and HitBTC.
XRP was trading at $0.5016 at press time, representing a 1% decline on the day.
